On zankara's date - 2 (The view of Dvaraka Math)

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

Yashwant Malaiya <malaiya at CS.COLOSTATE.EDU> wrote:

>
>Regarding Vishal's note(below), is there a copperplate of Sudhanva?

Almost a hundred years ago, the Dvaraka Matha published in Devanagari
script, the text of a grant supposedly given by a king named Sudhanva to
Sankara himself. The date given in this grant is in the 6th century BCE.
This grant was listed as evidence in an early 20th century court case
involving the Dvaraka Matha, but never actually introduced during the
hearings. It may be remembered that the succession at the Dvaraka Matha was
under dispute at this time. Some people have questioned whether such a
record of a grant even exists.

Assuming that there is indeed such a copperplate recording a grant, there
are important questions -

1. Is it an original record of what Sudhanva gave, or a copy?
2. What script was it written in? In 6th century BCE, it had to have been
pre-Asokan Brahmi or Kharoshti.
3. Who deciphered it? Where are the details published?
4. Were copperplates used to record events in the 6th c. BCE?

I suspect that some pundit got carried away in his enthusiasm, hit upon the
name Sudhanva in the hagiographic texts, claimed that there was a
copperplate record of his grant to Sankara, and filled in an appropriate
date that would convert to 6th c. BCE. The late 19th century seems to have
been a fertile time for generating such written records and attributing them
to the distant past.

Among the traditional Advaita Mathas, Sringeri is probably alone in
accepting an 8th century CE date for Sankara. Puri, following Dvaraka, also
relies on this Sudhanva grant. Almost all the others claim a date before
Christ. The contemporary authorities in the Mathas know that this is a
significant difference among them, and have candidly acknowledged it (vayaM
matabhedinaH) in the very first sentence of their 1993 resolution on the
Ayodhya issue.

Vidyasankar
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